The Experience of Christ

[awareness]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

Harold, you left out the best part of the quote:

It is a fair flower, and should be prized as a gift of God.
But cut it from its root in the blessed Book, and it soon withers away and dies.

Because I don't agree with it.

It may be true for those with a love affair with the Bible ... that their fair flower withers and dies when they lose a root system mingled with fallen men ... where failure can only be expected.

But fair flowers rooted in God don't wither and die ; the God that was clearly before the blessed book ; the book that tells of Abraham, who was rooted to God, and not to any Bible whatsoever. Clearly it's best and wisest for fair flowers to be rooted where fallen men have not been the intermediary.

Ultimately, God is the only real root system for fair flowers.

[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

Because I don't agree with it.

It may be true for those with a love affair with the Bible ... that their fair flower withers and dies when they lose a root system mingled with fallen men ... where failure can only be expected.

But fair flowers rooted in God don't wither and die ; the God that was clearly before the blessed book ; the book that tells of Abraham, who was rooted to God, and not to any Bible whatsoever. Clearly it's best and wisest for fair flowers to be rooted where fallen men have not been the intermediary.

Ultimately, God is the only real root system for fair flowers.

There's no problem with the blessed Book; the problem lies with those who handle it, people like you and I. Jesus handled the blessed Book correctly. He was the very Word incarnate. No problem there. You and I, on the other hand, at best are partial. If we presume, Lee-like, to handle the word impeccably we maul it worst of all. Then we simultaneously claim (as his acolytes do) that every thing is "rooted in the word" while producing all sorts of strange fruits.

I got a call from an LC friend, once. He wanted to see how I was doing, and came by to visit. I liked the guy and received him, and we chatted. He did nothing but spew LC cliches. "We have to build the Body", and "we go on together in the oneness of the Spirit", words which arguably derive from scriptures but in the hands of his LC masters have become twisted caricatures.

WL once captivated us with his ideas: Christ is the Good Land, we can experience Christ, and so forth. It was all so new and fresh. But 40 years later it isn't new and fresh. Anyone with new and fresh ideas got run out of town long ago. So they just repeat the same words over and over again. Yes they're related from or derived from the Bible and to their current experience (which experience is mainly speaking the same words over and over again), but the Spirit of God has long since left the building.

God's word is new and fresh; we've barely begun to touch it. I'm not a scholar by any means, and don't mean to cast undue influence to them versus anyone else. But they're exploring, and discovering. Any of us can explore; anyone can discover. God's house has many rooms, many palaces of ivory. We've barely crossed the threshold. Why restrict ourselves to reciting creeds and formulas from days gone by?

I recently challenged the Nicene Creed here on this forum, not to promote heresy nor to create a new gospel or a new Christ. But I wanted to poke the Creed with the word. I wanted to explore the word, versus the Creed, and see if there was any tension there. What can the tension open up? How can we appreciate the Creed as a historical construct, rooted in time, which then further opens up the word to us, which word is timelessness itself?

Doing this in public naturally caused alarm, and several posters said I was going off the deep end. But you know what? I was having fun. The word was opening up to me. I simply wanted to challenge the nice, neat and tidy "truths" and show that sometimes to keep them nice and tidy, we ignore the words of scripture that don't fit. Or we use interpretive rules in one section of scripture, which rules we abandon elsewhere to maintain the neat doctrine. So what do we really care for, doctrines, or interpretive rules, or the word? Have we advanced so far in the word that we can now safely ignore it and gaze reverently at our thought-constructions?

I myself don't want to lead a new religious movement. Things are bad enough already! But I really enjoyed looking at the word as if it were fresh, and new, and had the power to destroy all my ideas and concepts of how things were and ought to be. And I was glad that people eventually got alarmed, and protested. Those two guys on the road to Emmaus certainly had concepts: "We thought that He was going to be the Savior of Israel. (Luke 24:21)" Certainly they had Bible verses to back up their concepts. But Jesus destroyed their concepts. And in so doing their hearts were open, and burning.

[awareness]

WOW! It's like I tapped the rock, and water gushed forth ...

Originally Posted by aron

There's no problem with the blessed Book; the problem lies with those who handle it, people like you and I.

And before the printing press was undeniably man-handled from start to finish, out the wazoo. I have Christian friends that tell me that God protected the Bible down thru the ages. If so, considering that none of the NT manuscripts agree, God didn't do the job of it that you'd expect a god could do.

Originally Posted by aron

Jesus handled the blessed Book correctly. He was the very Word incarnate.

Being the Word incarnate how could he ever get anything wrong?

Originally Posted by aron

You and I, on the other hand, at best are partial. If we presume, Lee-like, to handle the word impeccably we maul it worst of all.

We all (the royal we) are nothing but fumblebums ... even those like Lee, and the scholars, in the end.

But let's admit this, at least: That we are word junkies. We, the royal we, back around 6000 yrs ago, invented writing and it became a universal addiction. Some of us even believe that was when the earth was created ... the written word was turned into creation. Then we, in the last written gospel, pushed this word back to the very beginning of everything. "In the beginning was the Word." So the word, that we became addicted to, became the beginning of it all. The word became so much to us that it became everything. That's an addiction to the written word.

In fact, according to a post by UntoHim, the experience of Christ depends upon being rooted in the Word.

WOW! The word blows my mind. I really can't get my mind around it.

Originally Posted by =aron

I myself don't want to lead a new religious movement. Things are bad enough already! But I really enjoyed looking at the word as if it were fresh, and new, and had the power to destroy all my ideas and concepts of how things were and ought to be.

Yes, burning bushes, talking snakes, stars that move at the speed of walking, Doves descending as Spirit ... and much much more of such things, sure can blow our concepts of how it is out of the water. I'll tell you, I admit, that the Bible completely blows my mind. That's how Lee used it to hook us. He blew our mind with it. Like you said, "WL once captivated us with his ideas ..."

Originally Posted by aron

But Jesus destroyed their concepts. And in so doing their hearts were open, and burning.

Snazzy footwork, and wordsmithing. Jesus, too, blows my mind. And the search for the historic Jesus is futile. We get to him only thru human filters -- fallen humans at that -- writing the word back in the bronze and iron age.

But I guess it's enough for us to experience Christ.

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

I recently challenged the Nicene Creed here on this forum, not to promote heresy nor to create a new gospel or a new Christ. But I wanted to poke the Creed with the word. I wanted to explore the word, versus the Creed, and see if there was any tension there. What can the tension open up? How can we appreciate the Creed as a historical construct, rooted in time, which then further opens up the word to us, which word is timelessness itself?

I posted previously about 'tension' between the word of God (the Bible, or scripture) and our creeds (our ideational templates, or thought-worlds). And I want to place that tension within the context of the flock, the church. We all can read the Bible and get understandings; we know what words mean in conventional usage. If something says "gold" or "sorrow" I have an experiential base to reference that, and presume some understanding. And I bring my presumed understanding into the church, into the fellowship of faith. I also usually have questions: why does it say this, here? Why did this character say or do that, there? Again, that's where fellowship comes in; usually there's some group consensus about what a passage may mean, or its significance within the larger story.

But what if your understandings or questionings produce tension? Suppose you see something, and you are like, "Wow, what a revelation!" You feel like an angel from God whispered in your ear as you read. You felt the warm glow of the Holy Spirit vibrating sympathetically within you. "Were not our hearts burning, as He opened for us the scriptures!" Now, you want to do the equivalent of the Samaritan woman, running around and banging on doors and exclaiming to others, to come and see. You want to run to the fellowship and exclaim, "I have seen the Lord!"

Now suppose there's tension between what you see and what the conventions of the flock, and suddenly you're in the minority? What do you do? I think of NT examples: again and again Jesus came up against the "majority opinion" of His time. And people who agreed with Him were often afraid to do so openly, for fear of incurring the wrath of the overseers... what if we find this in church? Look at Luther: conventional wisdom, and the traditions of the church, all pointed in one direction; Luther looked in God's Word and saw something different. What to do? That, my friends, is not an easy question. Luther's revelation of justification by faith eventually drove him from the RCC. Likewise, WN's revelation of the "local ground of the church" likewise drove him away from the western denominations, those heirs of Luther's Protestantism. And so on and so on; we all could get revelations if we wanted, and go our own ways. What if God whispers in your ear? What to do? (and I think this question is very relevant within the LC movement).

In my case, as an example, I really appreciate Clement of Alexandria, and prize his writings largely because he was in such temporal proximity to the original apostles. I feel as though he was hearing echoes of their speaking as he wrote. The ones who'd sat at John and Peter's feet had told others, who in turn told those who told Clement. As a scholar he studied the ancient writings, but Clement as a Christian disciple had access to oral traditions which offered interpretive windows into the nascent NT literature. But at one point in Clement's writing, I was like, "Whaaaaat?" It just didn't make any sense and was totally against my understanding, if I could be said to possess understanding. And I couldn't, I wouldn't abandon my own logic. I couldn't just say, "Well, this doesn't make sense, but Clement said it, so it's okay." No - I can read too! The Bible says "A" here, and "B" there, and logic dictates that A + B = C. Clement said A + B = X. No, I said; I simply protest. I'm sorry but no deal.

So what to do? My 'hero' Clement just tanked in front of my eyes. Ultimately I just let it go; we have the Bible, and our understandings, and the larger Christian conversation going on around us, as it has for centuries. I'm not going to agree with everything. Nor is everyone else going to "get in line" behind me. I didn't reject Clement, and likewise I don't exit the flock because of my experiences of God giving me some 'private truth'. The ongoing Christian fellowship contains a degree of uncertainty, and tension, and ultimately God may resolve it (tension is a great spur for revelation!), and some may just float along unresolved. That's okay.

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by awareness

It may be true for those with a love affair with the Bible ... that their fair flower withers and dies when they lose a root system mingled with fallen men ... where failure can only be expected.

"fallen men"? Where in the world did you ever come up with that idea, Harold? Oh wait, that's right, YOU GOT THAT CONCEPT FROM THE BIBLE! Now Harold, you haven't been cheating on your Humanism girlfriend again by reading the Bible have you? I wouldn't normally encourage such a thing, but in your case...CHEAT AWAY MY FRIEND!

But fair flowers rooted in God don't wither and die ; the God that was clearly before the blessed book ; the book that tells of Abraham, who was rooted to God, and not to any Bible whatsoever. Clearly it's best and wisest for fair flowers to be rooted where fallen men have not been the intermediary.

Of course God was clearly before the Bible, just like you were clearly before you made this post. Kinda makes sense, right? Abraham was rooted to God by the faith he put in the words God spoke to him. Now, as the later day followers of God, we also are to have faith in what he has spoken, which has been recorded for us in the glorious Gospel and the various epistles of the earliest apostles. In the end, the Word of God will be ultimately culminated in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ "and His Name is called the Word of God" (Rev 19:13). What a great and glorious day that will be!

Ultimately, God is the only real root system for fair flowers.

Now there is something I can say AMEN to!

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

"fallen men"? Where in the world did you ever come up with that idea, Harold? Oh wait, that's right, YOU GOT THAT CONCEPT FROM THE BIBLE! Now Harold, you haven't been cheating on your Humanism girlfriend again by reading the Bible have you? I wouldn't normally encourage such a thing, but in your case...CHEAT AWAY MY FRIEND!

Too funny! awareness got busted cheating for reading the Bible!